On December 26, two days after Nigerian Omar Abdulmutallab allegedly attempted to use underwear packed with plastic explosives to blow up the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight he was on, and as it became clear internally that the Administration had suffered perhaps its most embarrassing failure in the area of national security, senior Obama White House aides, including chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and new White House counsel Robert Bauer, ordered staff to begin researching similar breakdowns -- if any -- from the Bush Administration.

“The idea was that we’d show that the Bush Administration had had far worse missteps than we ever could,” says a staffer in the counsel’s office. “We were told that classified material involving anything related to al Qaeda operating in Yemen or Nigeria was fair game and that we’d declassify it if necessary.”

Members of the Allied Pilots Association, the pilots’ union at American Airlines, said Wednesday that the U.S. Transportation Security Administration didn’t do enough to warn in-air flight crews of the Christmas Day terrorist threat on a Northwest Airlines flight.

[...]

To ensure overall safety, “The TSA should have mandated that information about this security event be passed on to all airborne flights,” the APA Government Affairs Committee wrote.

Abdulmutallab bought his round-trip ticket for Christmas Day travel in Ghana on December 16 — under his real name. Even if the airline databases in Ghana aren’t available to U.S. intel, the ones in Europe, where he made his connection, probably are. In which case, how’d they miss a “Christmas surprise” that involved a Nigerian suspected of terrorist sympathies by his own father traveling on Christmas?

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of U.S. voters say waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used to gain information from the terrorist who attempted to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day.

Honor Blackman is best known as Pussy Galore, but this is a step down from that [emphasis added]:

Austin Powers movie star Fabiano Udenio fears for her life after her claims her husband could be armed and dangerous, TMZ reported.

In legal papers filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Udenio said: “I am frightened because there is a gun missing from one of his houses.”

Udenio, 45, who is best known for her role as Alotta Fagina in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, recently won an extension of an existing restraining order against her husband Robert MacLeod, 65.

When the MSM leaks the secret programs we’re using to hunt jihadists, the left applauds. When bloggers leak directives describing obvious reactive measures to enhance passeneger screening, the left reaches for its guns.

Wednesday, 30 December 2009

A group of California artists wants Mexicans and Central Americans to have more than just a few cans of tuna and a jug of water for their illegal trek through the harsh desert into the U.S.

Faculty at University of California, San Diego, are developing a GPS-enabled cell phone that tells dehydrated migrants where to find water — and also broadcasts poetry, regaling them on their journey much like Emma Lazarus’ words did a century ago to the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” on Ellis Island.

The Transborder Immigrant Tool is part technology endeavor, part art project. It introduces a high-tech twist to an old debate about how far activists can go to prevent migrants from dying on the border without breaking the law.

Immigration hardliners argue the activists are aiding illegal entry to the United States, a felony. Even migrants and their sympathizers question whether the device will make the treacherous journeys easier.

The designers — three visual artists on UCSD’s faculty and an English professor at the University of Michigan — are undeterred as they criticize a U.S. policy they say embraces illegal immigrants for cheap labor while letting them die crossing the border.

“It’s about giving water to somebody who’s dying in the desert of dehydration,” said Micha Cardenas, 32, a UCSD lecturer.

The effort is being done on the government’s dime — an irony not lost on the designers whose salaries are paid by the state of California.

“There are many, many areas in which every American would say I don’t like the way my tax dollars are being spent. Our answer to that is an in-your-face ‘so what?’” says UCSD lecturer Brett Stalbaum, 33, a self-described news junkie who likens his role to chief technology officer.

The state governmment that pays their salaries is going broke in no small part because it must provide prisons, hospitals, and schools to waves of illegals. Here’s hoping somebody hacks their system and leads the illegals into oblivion. (Via Michelle Malkin.)